1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a gas sensor and a nitrogen oxide sensor for measuring oxides such as O2, NO, NO2, SO2, CO2, and H2O contained in, for example, atmospheric air and exhaust gas discharged from vehicles or automobiles, and inflammable gases such as CO and CnHm.
2. Description of the Related Art
Those hitherto known as the method for measuring NOx in a measurement gas such as combustion gas include a technique in which the NOx-reducing ability of Rh is utilized to use a sensor comprising a Pt electrode and an Rh electrode formed on an oxygen ion-conductive solid electrolyte such as zirconia so that an electromotive force generated between the both electrodes is measured.
However, the sensor as described above suffers the following problems. That is, the electromotive force is greatly changed depending on the change in concentration of oxygen contained in the combustion gas as the measurement gas. Moreover, the change in electromotive force is small with respect to the change in concentration of NOx. For this reason, the conventional sensor tends to suffer influence of noise.
Further, in order to bring out the NOx-reducing ability, it is indispensable to use a reducing gas such as CO. For this reason, the amount of produced CO is generally smaller than the amount of produced NOx under a lean fuel combustion condition in which a large amount of NOx is produced. Therefore, the conventional sensor has a drawback in that it is impossible to perform the measurement for a combustion gas produced under such a combustion condition.
In order to solve the problems as described above, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 8-271476 discloses a NOx sensor comprising pumping electrodes having different NOx-decomposing abilities arranged in a first internal space which communicates with a measurement gas-existing space and in a second internal space which communicates with the first internal space, and a method for measuring the NOx concentration in which the O2 concentration is adjusted by using a first pumping cell arranged in the first internal space, and NO is decomposed by using a decomposing pump arranged in the second internal space so that the NOx concentration is measured on the basis of a pumping current flowing through the decomposing pump.
Further, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 9-113484 discloses a sensor element comprising an auxiliary pumping electrode arranged in a second internal space so that the oxygen concentration in the second internal space is controlled to be constant even when the oxygen concentration is suddenly changed.
The following fact has been revealed when a gas sensor is attached to an exhaust system of an internal combustion engine such as an automobile engine, and the internal combustion engine is operated. That is, in ordinary cases, the sensor output ordinarily makes proportional change based on an anchoring point of zero in accordance with the change in oxygen concentration as shown by a solid line “a” in FIG. 32. However, under a specified operation condition, the sensor output is subjected to shift-up as a whole as shown by a solid line “b”.
In general, as shown in FIG. 33, the total pressure of the exhaust gas discharged from the automobile engine is composed of a constant static pressure and a dynamic pressure generated by the pulsation of the exhaust gas pressure. The fluctuation cycle of the dynamic pressure is synchronized with the explosion cycle of the engine. As a result of investigation on the cause of the shift-up of the sensor output, it has been revealed that the shift-up occurs when the pulsation amount (=dynamic pressure) of the exhaust gas pressure is large as compared with the static pressure.
That is, as shown in FIG. 34, the shift amount of the sensor output has been measured with respect to the ratio between the dynamic pressure and the static pressure (dynamic pressure/static pressure). As a result, the shift amount is approximately zero when the dynamic pressure/static pressure is not more than about 25%. However, the shift amount increases proportionally from the stage at which the dynamic pressure/static pressure exceeds about 25%.
Therefore, when the dynamic pressure is increased, it is inevitable to suffer any deterioration of the correlation between the oxygen-pumping amount effected by the main pump in the first space and the oxygen concentration in the measurement gas. It is feared that the disturbance of the oxygen concentration caused in the first space may bring about any deterioration concerning the control of the oxygen concentration in the second space communicating with the first space and the accuracy of measurement effected by the detecting electrode as the NOx-detecting section.